Twenty years on

Paddy Ashdown made a speech on his 10th Anniversary as Leader of the Liberal Democrats.

After thanking many friends and supporters, he said:

"What we Liberal Democrats must now do, to ensure that the next ten years,
are as successful as the last.

"With the Cook/Maclennan Agreement a new political reality began to take
shape not long before last year's General Election. The old sterile
tribalism that has existed for centuries in British politics began to die.

"In the fourteen months since Labour's victory, the Liberal Democrats, with
a renewed and powerful mandate from the British people, have been working
with the Government to secure real and lasting change to the
constitutional settlement of our country.

"Co-operation with the Government on this agenda has meant that there are
currently a number of pieces of legislation, either already law, or
passing through Parliament, for which we and our predecessor Parties have
fought, often alone, for most of the years of this century - PR for
European Parliamentary elections; the Scotland Bill; the Government of
Wales Bill; Government for London; the Human Rights Bill; the Referendums
in Scotland and Wales Act; House of Lords reform; and the Regional
Development Agencies Bill.

"And, this Autumn, the greatest prize of all, the chance for PR in
Westminster, when a commission, under the chairmanship of Roy Jenkins,
will recommend a broadly proportional fair voting system for British
General Elections.

"Constructive opposition has produced huge dividends for our Party. And, I
believe, serves the country well, too.

"Now, there are some in the Government's huge coterie of hangers-on who
occasionally forget that working with the Government where we agree has
not diminished our responsibility, to forcefully oppose them where they
are wrong.

"I have not!

"It is the Liberal Democrats, not the Tories who have provided the only
real opposition to the Government:

"Over the 'Bust Boom' funding of our schools and hospitals which has led to
growing class sizes and record waiting lists.

"Cuts in benefits to single parents.

"The introduction of tuition fees for higher education.

"The holes in Labour's self declared ethical foreign policy.

"And it is Liberal Democrats who consistently put forward the positive and
progressive case for Europe."

Later, he said:

"the political landscape at the moment is in a state of flux - all of
the old rules and the old certainties have gone. The old paradigm of left
and right is increasingly becoming irrelevant.

"In Britain today, there are not three political parties, but five.

"There are two Conservative parties. One, an extreme rump of right wingers
who represent little more than a petty, crabbed English nationalism,
reinforced by a strong dose of old-fashioned xenophobia. The other is the
more moderate, more silent, diminished band of One Nation Tories.

"And there is outright civil war between them.

"Edmund Burke, that old proud Tory, once wrote: 'Bodies tied together by so
unnatural a bond of union as mutual hatred are only connected to their
ruin.'

"I can think of no better description of the modern Tory Party.

"But there are two Labour Parties also.

"There is New Labour, which is in Government.

"And Old Labour, increasingly resentful, still wed to the old socialist
orthodoxies, as far out of Government as the Conservatives they so
despise."

Apart from the reversal of power in the Labour Party, that analysis remains true, though I would throw into the mix a third Tory party, one of speculators who will grow richer from an increasing wealth gap and from increased economic volatility if we are cut loose from the stabilising influence of the EU.